Plan on invading Troll instances today? Not quite sure what to expect? Got you covered. You can find the TLDR versions here. Comment if there’s any additional noteworthy mechanics that you find on live servers that glossed over. Notes were taken from my experiences on the PTR and from kill videos.

Zul’Gurub

Venoxxis

Stay within the maze.

Players will get linked (Toxic Link) which deals damage to both players. Break the link by increasing the distance between the two players. Poison bolts get shot at players, heal through it. Boss has a frontal cone attack. At some point, watch out for pools of poison. Not sure if that’s linked to time or health.

Bloodlord Mandokir

Randomly targets a player and one-shots them. Mandokir levels up. Kill the raptor. The raptor goes around killing ghosts (which will resurrect you when you de) and you have a certain amount of them.

Watch out for big conical, fire spike thing

Kilnara (Panther boss)

First 50%: Tank and spank. Last 50%: Calls in panther buddies.

Interrupt Tears of Blood. Pull 2 packs of panthers during phase 1 and kill them to reduce the amount of panthers coming in the final phase. When they do engage you, AoE them down.

Casts a green shield bubble reducing magic effectiveness within it. Keep the tank and Jin’do within it. When Jin’do casts Shadow of Hakkar, run into the shield. Then run back out and resume DPS. Last I checked, he’ll do an AoE chain nuke of some kind if you stay too long within the shield.

Phase 2: Hakkar

There are four chains on the ground. They each have 1 million health. Those chains need to be broken. Look for Gurubashi Spirits. Really big mobs that have the ability to jump. The group needs to stay near chains so that the big guys will jump onto the chain thereby breaking it. Arrow on the player’s head signifies the target. Clear out the Twisted Spirit mobs.

Kicker: Need to keep moving to dodge assorted Shadow Blasts.

Zul’Aman

Akil’Zon (Eagle boss)

Eagles will pick players up and fly them around. DPS the birds. If you’re picked up, you can still DPS them. Look for the thundercloud and stand beneath it.

Nalorakk (Bear boss)

Standard tank and spank. Also does an AoE silence.

Charges the furthest player standing away. Inflicts a +500% damage taken debuff on the target. Don’t get charged twiced. Rotate with other group members in being the furthest person away. (Thanks Katherine and Wynn)

Halazzi (Lynx boss)

Kill totems. Kill the pet Lynx (likes to randomly rush players, healers need to stay on top of that). Lynx form frequently hits random players for massive damage. Your healer needs to be on the ball. Any self surviving cooldowns are encouraged to be used. (Thanks Katherine)

Jan’Alai (Dragonhawk)

Has a straight line fire attack, watch for it.

Watch for fire orbs and make sure you don ‘t stand near them. That hit box is a little larger than the graphic. Kill 1 of the hatchers. Healers need to dispel a fire debuff which comes from the hatched eggs. If Jan’Alai drops beneath a certain percentage, he hatches all of the eggs.

Hexlord Malacrass

Only 2 ads now. Kill them, blow up Malacrass. Remember Malacrass will assume the powers at random of the different classes in your group due to his power drain.

Daakara

Similar to Zul’Jin, he instead undergoes 2 animal forms instead of 4. Switches phases every 33%.

Lynx form: He rushes everybody and his damage gradually ramps up.

Dragonhawk form: He will dish out fires in a line from him as a center point. Watch out for flame pillars. It was a pain in BC, it’s a pain now.

Bear form: Randomly charges a player.

Eagle form: Spawns 5 random cyclones. They tend to stay stationary but will shift position every few seconds. Will shoot out lightning to players nearby.

Now you see, I’m a pretty efficient guy. In fact, some would even argue I’m impatient. I’ll try to do two things at once if I can get away with it. I plan my travel routes thinking of the fastest way to get somewhere. When I get on the sky train, I choose the car and door closest to the exit at the station I want to get off at. My friends despise it when I move so quickly. But I just really don’t like wasting time. If there is something that needs to be done, then let’s go and get it over with.

In heroics especially, I get a little tired when another player in the group is explaining what abilities are there and what players need to do to counteract it. They leave nothing out at all.

Me, I’m different.

The Twitter Rule

If you need to explain it in more than 140 characters, they’re not going to get it

I’ve started challenging myself to really think about the player and the role that they are. Is it really necessary for a healer to know when they need to interrupt? Does the tank need to know about this random add that gets crushed by DPS players anyway? Ergo, in PuGs, I’ve tried to condense and compact the information into stuff that’s relevant to them.

Don’t use 7 words when 3 will work (Good rule to follow for you new bloggers).

For this to really work though, players need to have certain schemas in place. A schema is basically a concept that lets you understand information in your own way.

Examples of Schemas

Void zone: Some dark circle on the ground that’s bad.

Cleave: Some attack that destroys all melee.

Tail swipe: Stand anywhere else but on the butt of the boss.

I’ve found the results to be promising. Most players I’ve come across seem to instantly just “get it” without the need for further explanation unless it’s a completely new concept for them.

Okay, I think went over by 6 characters with Vanessa. Hopefully, my point stands. The reality is that not many players read the full quest text. Like it or not, they read the objectives. By condensing explanations, players unfamiliar to encounters might get a better handle on them.

For obvious reasons, you don’t want to use this approach when it comes to raid bosses. Although, now I’m curious to see if it is possible to condense each role duties to 140 characters or less for raid bosses.

Here’s a video of the kill I was a part of when we took down the Omnitron Defense System during Sunday. Special thanks to Blacksen and his guild for allowing me to participate. I wasn’t actually healing at all on this fight. I’m the elemental shaman that’s throwing lightning bolts. It’s a hectic encounter and there is so much stuff going on. Three healers were used for 10 man. It’s a good indication of what to expect.

Iâ€™ve experienced just about type of death in Ulduar. Iâ€™d die to Constrictor tentacles. Early on, Iâ€™d get rocked by Hodirâ€™s Flash Freeze. Sometimes Iâ€™d get unlucky with a Rocket Strike.

Todayâ€™s post is designed to help you identify under what situations a healer is at fault and when it is simply out of their hands. Keep in mind there are several exceptions. In most cases, tanks are the one that will be bearing the brunt of these abilities. If they die, odds are good they werenâ€™t at full health. If it were any other player, well letâ€™s take a look shall we?

This is a really long post. Iâ€™d consider using it as a reference when trying to troubleshoot your raid to see if there really was anything that could have been done to keep players alive.

Flame Leviathan

Nothing much here. I donâ€™t send healers onboard the tank. I usually send up hybrid DPS who are able to heal in addition to DPS.

Razorscale

You died because of:

Devouring Flame â€“ Your fault. Should not have been standing in them. Itâ€™s the blue stuff on the ground.

Flame Breath â€“ Your fault. Donâ€™t stand in front of Razor when this happens. Tanks are an exception.

Fireball â€“ Our fault. Itâ€™s only 11000 damage or so. However, there are times when a player does get gibbed by these. Iâ€™ve been hit by this twice in a row in the span of a half second. I happened to have a shield up which saved me with a 15% health left.

Ignis

You died because of:

Scorch â€“ Your fault. Why on earth would you stand on a big giant tower of fire?

Flame Jets â€“ Our fault. Players should be in the green when Flame Jets connect.

Slag pot â€“ Our fault. You can help even more though if you can. I cast Lesser Healing Wave on myself when I play my Elemental Shaman to help the heals out.

Construct explosion â€“ Your fault. Run the heck out before it gets detonated.

Deconstructor

You died because of:

Gravity Bomb â€“ Neither. Itâ€™s the job of the guy who got Gravity Bomb to get clear. If heâ€™s too close, he pulls you in and detonates. Bomb guyâ€™s fault.

Light Bomb â€“ Both. Itâ€™s the Light bombâ€™s duty to also get clear. But the raid will take 2 or 3 ticks of Light Bomb damage. Our job is to heal that up. Requires effort on both parts.

Tympanic Tantrum â€“ Our fault. We should be able to outheal the damage done by Tympanic Tantrum.

Bomb bot â€“ Your fault. Should not be within proximity of these things when they explode.

Iron Council

You died because of:

Fusion Punch â€“ Our fault. Unless none of the healers are dispellers. Then itâ€™s the dispellerâ€™s fault. That debuff has to come off quick.

High Voltage â€“ Our fault. Steelbreakerâ€™s aura. Everyone gets hit by it no matter what. It just has to be out healed.

Rune of Death â€“ Your fault. Shouldnâ€™t be standing in it.

Chain Lightning â€“ Both. It depends on how much damage you take. If you die to a chain lightning, check to see if you were properly spaced up. You can stay with 1 or maybe 2 other players nearby. That type of damage is survivable. If your health was too low for a period of time, then its our fault for not getting you back in the green quick enough.

Lightning Whirl â€“ Both. It should be interrupted. Itâ€™s normal to see 1 or 2 ticks slip through. Most players should be able to survive that. If you didnâ€™t survive it, then chances are you werenâ€™t topped either.

Overload â€“ Your fault. When the little guy stops moving and starts doing his Kamehameha move, run out of the blast zone.

Lightning Tendrils â€“ Both. Itâ€™s difficult to outrun this. Some players are going to get caught in them. At the same time, a concerted effort should be made by those not being focused to run away from it, not run towards it. Focused players are taking 3000 â€“ 5000 damage per second. Itâ€™s possible if its one or two players. Itâ€™s a nightmare if itâ€™s five or so.

Melee hit for 30000 â€“ Not our fault. Ideally a cooldown will be popped. I know when I see Steelbreaker on the tank, Iâ€™ll drop a Pain Suppression reflexively on the tank to buy some extra time to get him repositioned. Sometimes Murphy likes to come along and crap on your raid with a Rune of Powered up Fusion Punch. One word: Screwed.

Kologarn

You died because of:

Shockwave â€“ Our fault. No player should be that low when Shockwave connects. Otherwise theyâ€™re dead.

Stone Grip â€“ Our fault. Gripped players just have to be kept alive until the arm takes enough damage.

Focused Eyebeam â€“ Your fault. On the one hand, your health should be high enough to eat a tick or two if necessary. On the other hand, if you have several seconds to run and kite the beam before you start registering damage.

Auriaya

Sonic Screech â€“ Neither. Some players werenâ€™t stacking up when it went off. Obviously if youâ€™re at 5% health when it hits, youâ€™re probably going to die. Should be in the green as much as possible.

Sentinel Blast â€“ Our fault. Itâ€™s healer duty to heal up the initial parts of the blast. The faster the interrupts, the less we have to worry about it.

Rapid Burst â€“ Out fault. No good reason why weâ€™d die to this either.

Rocket Strike â€“ Your fault. Stand out of the red stuff on the ground.

Laser Barrage â€“ Your fault. Nothing we can do about this either. Up to you to make a run for it.

Bomb bot â€“ Neither. These things do a lot of damage when they explode. By now, your raiders should be able to survive at least one of these with you at full health. Hopefully the rest of your raid can kill these before they become an issue.

General Vezax

You died because of:

Shadow Crash â€“ Your fault. Outrun these. Weâ€™ll do what we can to heal up the player or two that gets hit by it.

Searing Flames â€“ Neither. Someone missed an interrupt. This should not be going off at all.

Surge of Darkness â€“ Neither. Depends on the strategy. With defensive cooldowns, it shouldnâ€™t be a problem.

Mark of the Faceless â€“ Neither. Again, this requires the efforts of both. The target has to run out fast. Those nearby need to be healed up quickly.

Saronite Vapors â€“ Your fault. Be very careful about staying in too late. As a Priest, I Prayer of Mending on stack 6, and Shield myself on 7 and escape with about half my health. Others may not be as lucky.

Death Ray â€“ Your fault. These green beams start off harmless at first and donâ€™t move. When you see them, get clear. It amazes me how many players still stand there after itâ€™s been there for several seconds. Drop what youâ€™re doing and move.

Crusher Tentacles â€“ Your fault. Shouldnâ€™t be in melee range of these. They will kill with one blow.

Brain Link â€“ Technically our fault. But run towards each other quick!

Squeeze â€“ Our fault. We have to keep you alive long enough for the DPS to break you out.

Sanity â€“ Your fault. There is nothing we can do if your sanity reaches zero.

And there you have it! Use this list only as a rough guideline. There are always exceptions to everything. Look into the context of what happened before making a judgment. You donâ€™t always have to assign fault. But it is important to find out what happened so you can make sure it doesnâ€™t happen again. You’ll notice that a lof of these deaths are easily preventable by healers. But there are some rare cases where there’s just nothing we can do short of a psychic Guardian Spirit on a player.

Yes, youâ€™ll notice I didnâ€™t add any comments on Algalon. I havenâ€™t engaged him and it wonâ€™t be for a while.

European players get a treat as they got to check out an encounter on the EU PTR (unannounced I might add).

This appears to be one of the first encounters youâ€™ll find entering raid aspect of the coliseum. The sequence here is that it’s 3 sets of mobs that come in one after the other. A Hunter provides the video perspective here (and wow, I’ve never seen those kinds of numbers before but then again, Iâ€™ve never played a Hunter). It looks to be an encounter that’ll take a little under 9 minutes or so give or take.

Gormok

Seems like a straightforward tank and spank. I noticed the Hunter had to switch fire periodically. Looked like he was targeting members of the raid and trying to shoot something off. That’s some serious precision right there.

Acidmaw and Dreadscale

These damned Storm Peaks snakes again. I thought I had seen the last of them in the cavern when I was getting all the Oil and stuff out of there. Figures they’d be back again.

Icehowl

The first thing I noticed about his abilities is that he does a ~70000 damage headbutt followed by a stun. Oi vey.

Looks like you’ll be engaging all of these bosses one after the other with little to no reprieve. I can’t wait!

Welcome to Ulduar folks. If you made it past the lag, the vehicles, and the guard-dragon, and you didn’t get sidetracked by Ignis’ Hot Pockets, chances are you’ll soon find yourself standing in front of my favorite shiny robot in the game, the XT-002 Deconstructor. She just wants to give everyone a big hug . . . a spine-cracking hug, that is. She reminds me of eeeevil pet collector Elmyra from the Animaniacs. In all seriousness, Blizzard outdid themselves here. The boss’s animations and voice are oh-so-entertaining, and this fight provides a juicy-yet-manageable challenge for healers. Conquest downed XT on 4/21 using this strategy.

Essential Abilities

To effectively heal this boss, all healers need to make sure that their unit frames show the following three abilities. If you are a Grid or Pitbull user, add these to your custom debuffs.

Gravity Bomb
This ability places a debuff on a player. They need to move away from others to avoid causing AoE damage. This debuff does not tick immediately but rather does a significant chunk of damage at the delay of a few seconds. A player with Gravity Bomb will need a large heal once the ability triggers.

Light Bomb
This ability places a debuff on a player, and as with Gravity Bomb, the player must move away from others to avoid causing AoE Damage. This debuff is a strong, fast-ticking dot, and it lasts 9 seconds, dealing 3500 damage each tick. A player with Light Bomb needs immediate and steady attention.

Tympanic Tantrum
Of the three abilities, this one is the most dangerous. Tympanic Tantrum deals damage equal to 10% of each player’s maximum health every 1 sec for 12 sec. Nearby enemies are also dazed for the duration. Every player in the raid needs to receive a medium amount of healing in order to survive this ability. AoE and group heals (Divine Hymn, Circle of Healing, Prayer of Healing, Wild Growth, Tranquility) are good solutions.

Healing Assignments

In order to meet the dps minimum for the boss, you will probably need either 6 or 7 healers. These assignments will assume 6. Consult the following diagram for the optimum positioning of your 6 healers.

As always, the diagram is coded by class color. Our favorite arrangement uses a paladin and a tank healing-specced druid on the MT. On the raid, we have had good luck with using two priests, one shaman, and one raid-healing specced druid. In this diagram, you’ll notice that H3 and H4 are standing together, as are H5 and H6. The raid splits into two groups, and ranged dps stacks with raid healers. This grouping makes it easier for the person with Light Bomb or Gravity Bomb to run away. Your MT healers will have to cheat forward a bit of the pile of players in order to be in range of the tank. XT is big–approximately 10 yards across–and your tank will be on the far side.

Techniques

I’ve had the pleasure to both MT and raid heal for this fight, so I can share with you my top strategies for both positions. The key to this fight is using your abilities wisely.

MT healing
Two healers are necessary because this bot hits hard! Damage is spiky because the boss hits hard but swings slowly. We found a combination of a Resto Druid and a Holy Paladin to be very successful. The druid can keep some HoTs on the MT even through the Exposed Heart phase, in which there is no damage to the tank. We’ve lost the tank before when XT has come back with a vengeance, so be prepared with some HoTs or shields. Throughout the fight, the druid will probably be able to make a small contribution to raid healing. During Tympanic Tantrum, both MT healers will raid heal, and during the Heart phase, the paladin can probably dps, with the druid contributing as well if she is able to afford the mana hit.

Raid Healing
I learned the hard way that HoTs won’t cut it for Gravity Bomb and Light Bomb. For Gravity Bomb, have raid healers shield or pre-HoT and then time a big nuke heal to land as the bomb explodes. For Light Bomb, the player will need a series of quick heals (Flash of Light, Flash Heal, Lesser Healing Wave) or a combination of HoTs and direct heals. A Rejuv+Swiftmend is not enough. With my raid healing build, I was using HoTs + glyphed Healing Touch to good effect. Light Bomb is the more dangerous of the two bombs because it hits fast and hard.

For Tympanic Tantrum, HoTs and AoE heals are king. I was having great luck with Tranquility, Wild Growth, and Lifebloom during this phase. When you assign raid healers, make sure you distribute your AoE healers evenly on both sides.

Melee and Offtanks
There’s no way to get around doing double duty on this fight. At least one offtank will assist a couple of ranged dps with controlling the adds. Specific Raid Healers (perhaps H4 and H5) should be assigned to keeping the adds team alive.

Melee will need some attention, but Judgement of Light, if you have it, goes a long way towards keeping them healthy. We assigned our Resto Shaman to chain heal the melee group when she could.

DPS the heart!

All of the non-tree healers in your raid should switch to dps-ing the heart when it is exposed. Every little bit helps you meet the very high dps demand! I also recommend that any raid-healing druids switch forms and dps the heart. However, the MT healing druid should keep her HoTs on the tank, because XT returns suddenly and with a vengeance. If she can sneak a Moonfire in there too, by all means.

Mana Control

This fight has a few moments that will allow for OOFSR regen. It’s fairly tough on mana, and you will probably use a potion and your mana-restoration abilities (Innervate, Shadowfiend) if you are only carrying six healers. The fight is short with a 6 min enrage timer, but it’s fast and furious, so you can blow your mana if you’re not careful. If you find yourself running out, take a break instead of using your mana for offensive spells when the heart is exposed.

A Healer Check?

This boss tests healers in more ways than one. I like to think of it as a healing assignment check. Everyone has to do his or her specific job, and there’s no time for sniping. Moreover, you need a good balance of single-target and AoE heals to pull this off with 6 healers. There is both heavy Main Tank damage and extensive raid damage. Expect to use all of your skills.

Conquest was able to clear out Razorscale on day 2 of Ulduar. ItÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s a fun encounter and places a lot of emphasis on ad control.

Quick notes

3 phase encounter

Repeated waves of incoming trash

Pre-boss preparation

Suggested makeup

3 tanks

7 healers

15 DPS

As raid leader, I like to split my raid into groups that have meaning in the raid frames. In other words, I set aside groups 1 and 2 to deal with trash ads coming in from the left side. Groups 4 and 5 would take care of the right. I made sure there was 1 tank and 3 healers in each ad control team. Try to split up interrupters as best as you can since youÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ll want them to disrupt as many chain lightning casts as possible. ItÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s difficult to evenly split the DPS so use your discretion there accordingly.

Group 3 consists of your third tank and the 4 healers that were unable to fit into either teams.

Warrior tank

Hunter

Druid tank

Hunter

Paladin tank

Resto Shaman

Rogue

Disc Priest

Rogue

Resto Shaman

Mage

Death Knight

Resto Druid

Death Knight

Warlock

Mage

Balance Druid

Holy Paladin

Ret Paladin

Mage

Shadow Priest

Resto Druid

Holy Priest

DPS Feral Druid

Hunter

ThatÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s a rough visual representation of how I split my groups. Dark blue team on the left, light blue team on the right. Gold team is responsible for big, bad whirlwind titanÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s which IÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ll elaborate on in a moment.

Process

Phase 1

On the ground, the things you have to worry about are the incoming mobs that spawn from the different drill-shaped ground pods. Meanwhile, Dwarven expedition teams will be repairing the four harpoons.

Dark Rune Watcher: Interrupt their Chain Lightning when possible. Their Chains can hit up to 5 targets.

Adds will show up from the left and right. Dark blue and light blue teams will have to take care of them via DPS and CCÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s if necessary.

Now gold team gets to have some fun here. That Devouring Flame ability I mentioned above? HereÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s a hint I found out from the Plusheal forums. Devouring Flame can be predicted and controlled. Razor shoots Devouring Flames at the player closest to it. So all gold team has to do is stay under the boss as much as possible and soak up incoming flames. The Disc Priest in that group (me) just heals him. At the same time, gold team needs to pick up Dark Rune Sentinels that show up in the middle.

Gold team in action

The tanking Druid played first person and looked up. I stayed within range in support. When I see a Sentinel spawn, IÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ll cue him and let him know thereÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s a sentinel and heÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ll pick it up right away. Once gold team establishes aggro, he calls for ranged DPS to focus and nuke. Once the sentinel is down, itÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s back to add control.

There are four harpoons. When theyÃ¢â‚¬â„¢re all repaired and fired, Razorscale is brought down to the ground. Get three harpoons fired and hold on the fourth one. You fire them by having a player from either blue teams right click on the turrets. Your raid leader should call when to fire the fourth one. When most of the ads are dead, cue the fourth turret call.

When a Harpoon is fixed, it will flash on your screen. I personally like to say things like Ã¢â‚¬Å“harpoon 1 fired, harpoon 2 fired, harpoon 3 fired, harpoon 4 standing byÃ¢â‚¬Â so that the entire raid knows where weÃ¢â‚¬â„¢re at.

Phase 2

When the raid leader calls for harpoon 4 to be hit, all DPS should be switching off ads. Anything extra should be CCÃ¢â‚¬â„¢d in the process. Razor will fall to the ground and remain stunned for seconds. Full DPS on Razor at this point. Stay away from the front of this boss. After time is up, Razor will do a wing buffet knocking everyone back and light a conical flame breath. SheÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s facing the entrance into this area while sheÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s stunned.

After the stun wears off, the turrets will explode and have to be repaired again. Razor flies back into the air and triggers phase 1 again.

This would be the phase to hit Heroism or Bloodlust to push Razor into phase 3. If Razor’s health isn’t low enough then you have to do phase 1 all over again.

Phase 3

Have your main tank of choice pick up Razor and immediately face her away from the raid. A good position would have Razor face the entrance just past the turrets. SheÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s going to continue to do AoE knockbacks (Wind Buffet), Devouring Flame, and Flame Buffets. The Flame Buffet debuffs will continue to stack. If it reaches a certain point, itÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s going to insta-kill your tank.

Fused Armor is another debuff your tank will take. When it reaches 5 stacks, your tank is not going to be able to move, use skills or taunt. YouÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ll have to change tanks before it reaches 5 to buy enough time for your raid to finish her off.

Your raid positions themselves and spreads out behind the boss during this part.

Healing strategy

For both blue teams, youÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ll want 2 raid healers and 1 tank healer on each side. YouÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ll also want 1 tank healer in the gold team. Stay as far back as possible to avoid any chain lightnings that manage to get through. Use strong AoE heals to mitigate them as well. During phase 2 when DPS switches over, the tank healers need to remain on the tank if theyÃ¢â‚¬â„¢re on any ads. Any idle healers are encouraged to jump up into the play and DPS the boss during phase 2.

I managed to squeeze some PTR time on this boss earlier in the weeks before. But hereÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s a step-by-step break down of what you need to do in order to get through the encounter.

Quick notes

Vehicular fight

Trash should be cleared using your vehicles

After ~two attempts on the boss, trash will respawn (not sure if thereÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s a link to time)

Four towers control the difficulty of the boss

Vehicle health is based on item level not stats

Map

Trash phase

This is not a Hyjal style waves encounter. Your raid group will have access to vehicles first. When your raid is ready to move out, speak to Brann Bronzebeard to engage the Iron army.

(Click image for dialogue)

Tower information

Your targets are the four towers throughout the area. The difficulty level of Flame Leviathan can be controlled based on which towers you leave up. Towers are easily identifiable because of the color of their glow. Location of the towers are shown in the map above. Use your vehicles to bring them down.

Storm beacons will summon additional units. Destroy them to stem the tide of incoming spawning mobs.

Roles and vehicular abilities

There are different roles that each vehicle plays. IÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ll break them down below.

Hurl boulder: Throws a really big rock at variable range. Think Wintergrasp or Strands type. Ignites Tar upon impact. Hurl pyrite barrel: Using 5 pyrite, will do ~30000 damage Ram: Damage and knockback effect Throw passenger: Used only when the passenger is in the catapult. Dwarf tossing is finally a reality (important)

Siege Engines

The Flame Leviathan will only lock on to one siege engine at a team. The targeted engine must kite the boss around.

Non-kiting siege engines will have to stay close to the rear of the Leviathan as much as possible and should interrupt Flame Jets. After 30 seconds, Flame Leviathan will switch and target a different Siege Engine and chase after that. Use Steam Rush to build up some distance.

HereÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s a kite path you can try out.

Blue line: Opening route. The boss will be weapons free at this time (as in engage-able).

Siege engine passengers should be targeting pyrite ammo thatÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s floating in the air. If there arenÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t any available, switch fire to the boss.

If youÃ¢â‚¬â„¢re out of siege engines, FL will go after demolishers or choppers.

Choppers

There should be 1 chopper following the targeted siege engine. Choppers will be laying down tar directly in front of the Flame Leviathan to slow him down and the tar can be ignited by Boulders from demolishers.

Choppers also have to extract the FL Unit (explained further).

Demolishers

Stay as far away as you can. DPS with Hurl Boulder. Firing Pyrite Barrels should be held off until FL is stunned.

Demo passengers not being thrown up will need to work the catapult to load up Pyrite.

Flame Leviathan stun unit

Your demolishers have the capability to launch players onto the Flame Leviathan. The FL unit is going to comprise of:

3 DPS (Suggest Druid, Death Knight, Rogue)

1 Healer (Suggest Paladin or Druid)

I suggested those classes because theyÃ¢â‚¬â„¢re going to be under fire from various guns while up there. YouÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ll want maximum survivability.

Both players must be in the passenger seat of the demolisher. ThereÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s an ability called Ã¢â‚¬Å“Load into CatapultÃ¢â‚¬Â which places them in the throwing arm of the demo as a projectile. When itÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s called for, your demoÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s close in. The driver then hits Ã¢â‚¬Å“Throw passengerÃ¢â‚¬Â which launches the passengers on top of the Flame Leviathan.

When the FL unit is on the back of the boss, they will be able to take out all 4 turrets. When the turrets explode, thereÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s a button. You hit the button which starts a 10 second channel resulting in a stunned boss and a damage taken by Flame Leviathan by 50% and resetting his speed.

The FL unit will then be ejected and parachuted off the boss. Your choppers must swoop in and extract them back to the demolishers. YouÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ll want to stun Leviathan while heÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s in a tarÃ¢â‚¬â„¢d area.

Video

For a visual Ã¢â‚¬Å“how toÃ¢â‚¬Â, see this video below. Actual encounter starts around 20 seconds or so in. Note the positioning of siege engines and how the tar is laid out.

For every one else, I had the screenshots in my library for quite a while.

ItÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s no fun listening to audio streams and listening to Ã¢â‚¬Å“OohsÃ¢â‚¬Â, Ã¢â‚¬Å“AhhsÃ¢â‚¬Â, and applause without getting to see it.

Check out the last shot, too. I donÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t know if anyoneÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s ever mentioned that yet before. I found it interesting.

So hereÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s a few shots of Eye of Eternity, Obsidian Sanctum, Halls of Lightning, and Storm Peaks

Left: HereÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s a shot of Malygos in his humble abode. The raid instance is literally a giant disc with Malygos flying around until you activate him. ItÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s a 3 phase encounter. I havenÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t successfully completed him yet so I canÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t offer much at this time.

Right: Me in my awesome attempt to try and do something. Alas, Malygos is overpowered and promptly kills us a matter of minutes.

Left: This is a shot of Obsidian Sanctum. Here is a shot of the party engaging the mini-bosses.

Right: YouÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ll notice the phasing mechanic put in play. Even though it Ã¢â‚¬Å“looksÃ¢â‚¬Â the same, I get thrown into a different dimension. Here, I have to kill that shifted drake along with the Rogue or else something bad happens. I donÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t actually know what.

Left: WeÃ¢â‚¬â„¢re taking on Sartharion. The guy hits like a pansy. For the raiders, take a good look at positioning in terms of tank, boss, and group. ThereÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s a good reason for it.

Right: Ã¢â‚¬Â¦ Because every so often, a big wall of fire is going to rake the island that weÃ¢â‚¬â„¢re on. Notice thereÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s a hole. Right when the wall warning occurs, the entire raid needs to ensure theyÃ¢â‚¬â„¢re in one of the two Ã¢â‚¬Å“safe zonesÃ¢â‚¬Â (on the left and on the right, by his tail, if you look carefully). If you eat the fire, you get knocked back and take a non-pansyish amount of damage.

Left: One of the old guys, I think. WouldnÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t dare hit a Dwarven brothaÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ from anothaÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ mothaÃ¢â‚¬â„¢. But I donÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t dare test out my hypothesis.

Right: Another shot of the exterior. Place looks b-e-a-utiful.

Left: Interior shot of Halls of Lightning. See those Dwarves on the left? ItÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s the Terra Dwarva army, baby!

Right: The roving boss that was mentioned in the D & R panel is this guy. We decided to set him up in the corner. ThereÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s me with the lightning debuff (Pro tip: When you get it, donÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t move. Trust me.)

Left: Lastly, check out this interesting shot. ItÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s right after a wipe and after I released spirit. When you died in Tempest Keep, youÃ¢â‚¬â„¢d automatically res to full health and life outside. But if you die out in the Halls, you seem to res in spirit form while mounted on Ghostly Gryphon.

Epic

About me

My name is Matticus and this is my World of Warcraft blog. Here you can read about my thoughts regarding healing as a priest. As a guild master, I also write about guild and raid related topics. The blog has expanded to include thoughts from other regular contributors. The aim of this blog is to help you grow and improve. My unending goal is to have something relevant and useful in every post. or more, you can check out my columns on WoW Insider. Visit theGuildmasters to talk shop with other GMs, raid leaders, and officers. Or if you're looking to join a guild, check out my guild Conquest.